Red Wine Cupcakes

I was sitting in my livingroom the other day thinking about cupcakes, I do this quite often, and I had an idea, red wine cupcakes with chocolate ganache or mousse, and cream cheese frosting. Any yay or nay on this?

The ganache or mousse and frosting won't be hard in the least bit, I've made ganache and frosting before, I haven't made mousse before but I have faith in it. What I need help with is the cake. I'm only seeing chocolate wine cake recipes when I didn't want my cupcakes to be chocolate at all, is it more popular over practical, or should I just go for chocolate? And if I do say regular white cupcakes or something else, how would I incorporate the wine?

Also, the wine will be a soft red dessert wine, Ste Chapelle's, if that's anything.

I hope you can understand how silly it is telling me to sit in another room, the idea sounds great in all the rooms of my house I just was in my livingroom when I had the thought, and wherever it was my mum was standing when I asked her, she thought a great deal on the idea. I like the idea of chocolate, but I don't want it to be more overwhelming and make the wine pointless, you know? That's my only real fear. Also, it would be really nice to get a good red/maroon color, but aesthetics aren't everything. Food is as food does, and I'd rather eat something that looked horrible and tasted amazing than looked amazing but tasted horrible.

I think we're just hitting and missing here, really ^.^; I think a fair bit in the kitchen but I was watching the food network at the time, the view is terrible from there :p I wish I could be near a wine cellar, sadly I'm not. And I know wine and chocolate go wonderfully together, it's what makes valentines and sweet and wonderful. I think that's pretty-well the same for a lot of things, though. I'd love to make a mulled wine cupcake as well, one day, which I don't want to assume will go go good with chocolate. I likely will go with the chocolate recipe, though, I just wanted to know if that was the only way I could go about it. I'm sure it would work great with another type of cake but chocolate is the main choice.

The idea of wine and chocolate is not something that appeals to me at all, and the idea of wine and cake doesn't either. I don't like lemon with chocolate either, it's the sourness that would bother me. But i know it's very popular.

However. thinking of wine in a cake batter, it just doesn't seem like it would fit. Wine is not that strong a flavor to hold up through the flour and baking process. But if you want to get that flavor combination, why don't you use wine or a wine reduction in the frosting? Maybe you could do an italian meringue with a wine and sugar syrup, or something like that. You could do a filling with something like that, or a sort of zabaglione filling and a deep chocolate ganache over it, or a thin chocolate glaze over a zabaglione frosting or a wine-flavored italian meringue - like cover the cupcake thickly with the frosting and then drizzle the chocolate only around the edges, or swirl it with a toothpick

A zabaglione filling or frosting could be made if you use sugar and wine reduction beaten into egg YOLKS, and spread on or filled in the cupcakes

or a zabaglione buttercream made with that base and butter beaten in.

Maybe a deep, dense, dark chocolate cupcake would be a good base for this.

"Siduri said, 'Gilgamesh, where are you roaming? You will never find the eternal life that you seek...Savour your food, make each of your days a delight, ... let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.'"

"Siduri said, 'Gilgamesh, where are you roaming? You will never find the eternal life that you seek...Savour your food, make each of your days a delight, ... let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.'"

I understand what you're getting at, I'm a fair amount of picky when it comes to my foods and all. I wish I didn't have to use chocolate cupcake base at all, but no one seems to be interested in a regular wine cake rather than chocolating everything up. The problem is the fact that people do make chocolate wine cakes, I don't want to flavor the fillings or toppings, if I had I wouldn't have made the thread. That idea is so far from my mind that you could call me a fair bit of words all of which would match up with me being stubborn, but this is what I want. I want a wine cupcake that IS the base, I want it to headline and I want the chocolate to be subtle, like that simple kiss that wraps things together.

I am really glad you (or your mother) found a recipe, By the way thanks for posting it. There is nothing wrong with looking for a certain recipe ....can you come back and give us feedback on how they tasted ?

Of course I'll come back and tell you, I'll be baking them up a little later tonight so you'll have my review, as well as my nana's. Wish me luck on some good cupcakes, and good luck and good baking to all of you.

-edit- It wasn't the best thing, I was actually so tired after making the mousse that I just wanted to avoid them for the whole night. They're a little dense and the flavor doesn't come through enough, I think, but at least I'm happy with the cream cheese frosting. I wanted chocolate, so I used the cream cheese one included and added some cocoa powder and it went off really good. The mousse was a bit gritty last night, but I don't think it is anymore. Is there anything I should be worried about with my mousse? I'll be honest, I'm not much of a fan of using raw eggs and I'm still a little iffy on it.